When people hear we are vegans they often ask me how I feed my children, or say, “I could do it for myself, but my family would never go for it!” This blog is the explanation. It is a record of all the wonderful foods and recipes we discover, invent and evolve as a family. But most of all, it is food made into visible love.

This week we went apple picking and this morning I put together apple pancakes that were good for all eating plans. I started with whatever gluten free flour was in the cupboard, used the last squash from my garden (a wee little one) as a thickener, and threw in apples. The results were delicious!

3/4 C of brown rice flour (or any gluten free flour)

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1 tablespoon flax seed mixed with 3 tablespoons water

pinch of salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 C of cooked acorn squash

1/2 cup of non-dairy milk (I used cashew milk)

1 apple chopped into bite-sized pieces

1/4 C toasted pecans

optional: 2 tablespoons coconut cream

optional: 1/8 teaspoon fresh chopped ginger

optional: 2 tablespoons sugar (no longer sugar free!)

Sift or shake together the flour, salt, cinnamon and baking powder. Mash together the non-dairy milk with the squash, flax seed mix and optional coconut cream. Combine. Fold in apples, pecans and optional ginger.

Cook as you would any pancake on a griddle or large skillet. Serve with maple syrup or just eat them plain! The squash gives them a slightly creamy texture.

I was avoiding the fairly empty refrigerator before dinner and thinking about how much I didn’t want to go shopping. In my usual head-on approach to a necessary task, I was sneaking a read on my iPad Kindle app when a pop-up notification appeared telling me the July issue of BHG was on my ipad. In some fit of domesticity I ordered an electronic subscription several months ago and had kind of forgotten about it. I went straight to the recipe index and noticed a whole section on broccoli. Hmm, thought I, I have broccoli in the fridge…
A few tweaks of the recipe to “veganize” it for Irad (whole wheat flour, flax seed in place of eggs, rice milk in place of milk), and voilà!

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup corn meal

2 tablespoons baking powder

1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt

1 and 1/2 cups of rice milk

2 tablespoons ground flax seed

One head of finely chopped broccoli, softened by steaming or in microwave for 2 minutes

Mix dry ingredients together. Fold in the rice milk quickly along with the broccoli.

Form the fritters into patties, and fry lightly in pan. Serve immediately with a light salad.

I decided it was time to update our hummus recipe, because we have changed our own recipe over the last few years. This version does not require a Vita-mix to make your own tahini, but it does require access to a store that sells tahini. The best tahini is usually found at an Arab specialty market, but markets like Whole Foods also sell it.

Thorough research, which included eating hummus in numerous places around Tel Aviv, exchanging tips with fellow hummus makers, and receiving requests from people who do not have a Vitamix, and a lot of experimentation, led to the following winning recipe:

1 cup dry chickpeas
1 tsp baking soda
3 garlic cloves
1 cup tahini paste
2 lemons
1/3rd fresh Jalapeño pepper
1 tsp salt
olive oil
paprika, ground cumin
1. Soak the chickpeas overnight
2. Drain the soaked chickpeas, and cook in plenty of water, with 3 garlic cloves and 1 tsp baking soda, until soft (about 40 minutes, but will vary according to beans)
3. IMPORTANT! The baking soda will cause a stiff foam to collect on top of the boiling water. SKIM THIS FOAM OFF AND DISCARD. This is the magic secret process for good hummus.
4. Drain the of beans, set aside the cooking liquid
5. Set one cup of cooked chickpeas aside, and place the rest in a food processor
6. Add the tahini, the juice of one lemon, salt, very little ground cumin, Jalapeño, and 1.5 cups of the cooking liquid
7. Blend until you get smooth consistency. Add liquid if necessary
8. Pour the fresh hummus into 3 bowls. Sprinkle the whole beans, set aside in step 5, on top
9. Add olive oil and the juice of one lemon on top. Sprinkle with Paprika.

We eat this hummus every weekend, and each time the kids claim it is the best ever…

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Prep brussel sprouts by trimming stem off and slicing in half. Lay them out single layer on a jelly roll pan. Sprinkle the olive oil on to the pan and shake and roll them around to coat them and the pan. Grind salt over the top.

Put in heated oven for 10 minutes. Open oven and grab pan (with pot holder!) and shake them around, or flip them with a spatula. Heat another 10 minutes.
Serve immediately. I often lay these out right as kids get home from school and are hungry for snacking and… they disappear.

This is a salad I learned to make in Israel. Most recipes from Israel are either eastern European in origin, or middle eastern, and this belongs to the former. In Israel there are hundreds of ways to prepare beets, and thousands of ways to prepare eggplant. This salad lands on the sweet side of the spectrum.

Cook beets in the skin. Remove beets from pan and reserve cooking water for borscht. Run beets under cold water and slip skins off. Chop beets into cubes on cutting board – plastic cutting board is good because a lot of red beet juice will soak into your wooden cutting board. (It can be removed with a good scrub.)